


Four Cups of Coffee out of Five

by IckleRooster



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Weasleycest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 14:11:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6569362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IckleRooster/pseuds/IckleRooster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron and Ginny discuss a mistake they have made together over a cup of coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Cups of Coffee out of Five

01

The end of the war seemed like a lifetime ago.

Realistically, only a couple of years had passed since Voldemort had been defeated, the Wizarding world was still trying to land on its feet and for the most part, it had. The remaining Death Eaters had been rounded up, the Ministry of Magic had been fortified as a force for good once again and Hogwarts had been repaired to its previous greatness.

There were many funerals, with a few light-hearted impromptu Weddings in between, but mainly there were funerals.

All the Wizarding locations across the globe where darkness had spread through was seeing light again and returning businesses back to normal; every shop in Diagon Ally had been either repurposed or reproduced in some manner, and this included the grand reopening of Olivander’s wand shop; Wizarding villages such as Hogsmeade prospered, the streets were full again and the shops were busy with customers.

Even places that were often associated with the Dark Arts, such as Knockturn Ally for instance, felt as though they were safer to travel along than they ever were before.

And yet, despite the fact that all this good light was spreading through the Wizarding World, it still did not stop Ron Weasley from feeling completely miserable about spending yet another Saturday night alone at home. As if living alone was bad enough, having to cook for himself was even worse – at least if someone else lived with him, he’d have a person to complain about his cooking with.

Ron had been out of the Burrow for around about six months now, deciding he’d had enough of his family at this point, and using instead the excuse that he wanted to live in an apartment closer to London. He had been working at the Ministry of Magic for the past eighteen months, alongside his best friend Harry Potter, and he had been helping track down the remainder of the Death Eaters.

His work hours were less these days, having locked away so many bad guys; so unfortunately the lonely Saturday nights had become far too frequent for his liking. A couple of times he had thought about working up the courage to go and visit his other friend, Hermione Granger, with whom he had attempted to start a relationship with and had ultimately failed. 

They had been fine for a while there after the war, but eventually the constant bickering and arguing had resurfaced and they had broken up. The last he had heard, she was dating some snob prick that had helped her get an internship over at the Daily Prophet; he tried not to think too hard about what she might have done in order to get such an opportunity.

Ron tried putting this thought into the back of his mind as he began to cut some potatoes for his dinner, but it didn’t help very much that his apartment was quiet, it was too easy to think. He had just put the potatoes in a pan and was taking them to the oven when there was a knock on his door, making him jump and sending the potatoes flying.

Cursing, Ron abandoned the mess, placed the pan on the sink and rushed to get the door. The last person that he expected to find on the other side of the door was, probably in reality, Hermione; but the second last person that he expected, and indeed the person who it turned out to be, was his youngest sibling and only sister, Ginny.

She looked a little irate to tell the truth.

‘Where do you keep your alcohol?’ she barked at him right off the bat, catching Ron off-guard.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Ron asked in return, but his sister brushed past him and threw an overnight bag down onto his floorboards.

‘Harry and I had a fight,’ she explained to him, as she made a beam-line for the kitchen.

‘You did?’ Ron asked curiously as he shut the front door and followed his sister.

Ginny had stopped on the threshold of the kitchen and was looking down at the fallen potatoes that spread across the tiles.

‘What happened here?’ she asked, but Ron wasn’t going to let her change the subject.

‘Never mind that,’ Ron said, ‘what did you and Harry fight about?’

‘Oh what does it matter?’ Ginny asked, carefully tiptoeing over the potatoes, ‘I say one thing, he has to correct it, then we go back and forth at one another for an hour. I only ended up leaving because he wouldn’t, said something along the lines of it being his house and not mine, but what ever.’

‘Umm… not that I’m unhappy to see you sis,’ Ron said carefully, as Ginny wrenched open his fridge, ‘but isn’t this usually the sort of thing that you would discuss with one of your girlfriends? Like Hermione for instance?’

Ginny peered at her brother over the top of the fridge door and gave him a look of concern.

‘Oh sorry, I suppose you wouldn’t know,’ she said seriously, making Ron fidget.

‘Know what?’ he asked wearily.

‘Hermione’s abroad,’ she explained, before shrugging at her brother and returning to rustle about in his fridge.

‘Abroad?’ Ron stared intently at the fridge door which was hiding his sister, ‘you mean overseas?’

‘What do you think it means?’ she snapped at him.

‘Well, where did she go?’ Ron was genuinely curious.

Ginny resurfaced with a frustrated look on her face and closed the fridge door empty handed.

‘I don’t remember if she told me,’ she said truthfully, now beginning to open some cupboards randomly, ‘might have been America. Something to do with the Daily Prophet I assume - I’m sorry, Ron, I don’t know any more than that.’

Ron had shuffled forward and sat down at the table, leaving Ginny to wander round the entirety of his kitchen looking for liquor.

‘Are you kidding me?’ she finally said after a few minutes of silence, and causing Ron to look up, ‘is there not a single drop of alcohol in your apartment?’

Ron frowned. ‘Sorry, no,’ he responded, causing Ginny to sigh disappointedly and sit down at the table with him.

‘Brilliant,’ she said, folding her arms and letting her eyes wander the kitchen aimlessly.

Her eyes fell onto the potatoes again which were still littered across the floor, and looked up at Ron expectantly, who seemed to be off in a daze about this news involving Hermione.

‘Were those going to be your dinner?’ she asked him, indicating the potatoes each in turn.

Ron nodded when he saw what Ginny meant, and she glanced around one more time at them before saying, ‘sorry if I interrupted.’

‘I’d need to be doing something significant for you to interrupt it,’ Ron pointed out, forcing Ginny to look at him curiously. ‘All I had planned was another miserable Saturday night alone, and now I found out my ex-girlfriend is off with some snob having the time of her life.’

Ginny laughed. ‘Snob is right,’ she said to him, ‘you have no idea, Ron… this guy, he’s the most self-centered man you will ever meet.’

‘Really?’ Ron asked in hopes to raise his spirits.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘Harry and I had the misfortune of dining with him last week and he had the audacity to critique my meatloaf. I don’t exactly recall every word of it, all I really remember was seeing red as he talked, but I do believe the words “stale” and “dull” were involved in some fashion.’

‘He sounds lovely,’ Ron said happily, he was bouncing in his chair.

Ginny clicked her tongue and stood up and began pacing the kitchen. ‘I definitely need a drink of something.’

Ron stood up too and surveyed the kitchen. ‘Well if you’re going to stay,’ Ron said, and he glanced at the overnight bag by the front door, ‘let’s just order a pizza and I’ll nip to the corner shop for some firewhiskey. Sound good?’

‘Sounds perfect,’ Ginny smiled, and she insisted that she would clean up the scattered potatoes in the meantime.

An hour later, the two siblings were eating pizza, sharing a bottle of firewhiskey, and laughing outlandishly at the uptight behaviours of Hermione’s boyfriend. Ginny was attempting to recall every miniscule detail of this snob’s attributes; it ranged from his obsessive compulsive hand washing, to his list of phobias which would rival some of the essays Hermione used to write at Hogwarts.

And probably the most laughable was the fact that he wore an extremely expensive suit to a casual afternoon lunch.

As the night progressed, the bottle of firewhiskey became much lighter, and in-turn, their laughter became heavier and louder and they were inching closer to one another on the couch. Eventually, much to their disappointment, the bottle became empty, and in frustration, Ron dropped it onto the floorboards and let it roll away from the couch.

And then it happened.

Intoxicated, fuelled with anger, and perhaps some jealousy, the two siblings embraced in a hug that was just supposed to be their goodnight gesture; but somehow, with a mere turn of their cheeks, it became a kiss instead. And not just a simple peck on the mouth and pull away kiss; but a full kiss that was passionate and of great feeling.

They both pulled away at an appropriate time where, if only just one of them had had an inch of common sense left, would had pushed the other person away and called it at that. But the firewhiskey kicked in, and they were kissing again; they were quite aware of it this time, and not just of their lips meeting, but of each others body heat and obvious arousal, which had built up over the course of the evening.

Particularly for Ron.

He had not had his lips on another girl since Hermione, and now he was kissing his sister, he almost allowed himself to believe that he would feel better if he continued doing it. Subconsciously, both were moving off the couch and along the hall; they continued their embrace, remained attached at the mouth and yet, despite being clearly tipsy, managed to find Ron’s pitch black bedroom.

They were finally able to breathe when they pulled away from their kiss and stripped themselves of their clothes in the dark. By this point they were running on instinct, they would not even have stopped to look at one another if they could see, they just climbed into the bed and went under the covers and let the alcohol do all the work for them.

It was all over rather quickly – all that tension that was built up over so long released in a passionate moment and, due to the alcohol running through their systems, it was all they could do but collapse in each others arms and fall straight to sleep.

-

Even if they opened up a thesaurus and searched for years afterwards, Ron and Ginny would never be able to come up with a word that could appropriately describe the awkwardness that was waiting for them as they woke the next morning. Ron woke first; the blinding light from his window was what stirred him – having been in such a rush to get to bed, he had never had a chance of going through his regular routine which would have included shutting the blinds.

But this little mistake made him the first to realise what they were waking up too. As he stretched, and took the sun in, and his brain began to click into a conclusion, he looked down with great regret at his little sister, who still slept silently on his chest.

His stomach felt weird all of a sudden, as if he’d missed a step going down a flight of stairs; the second pain he endured was a raging hangover, which finally took effect now that he was aware of his surroundings; and finally, worst of all, he lay there thinking of the consequences he would now have to face, after having just slept with his sister.

As he pondered this nightmare and held his head in his hands, Ginny woke soon after, again the bright sun blinding its second victim. She stirred in his arms and began to sit up, also quite obviously sporting a hangover as she brought her hand to her head and rubbed it.

‘I feel sick,’ she said, her eyes having darted sideways to see her brother was awake also.

Ron mumbled a response as they both shifted apart and Ginny surveyed her surroundings, the scattered items of clothing, and their current state under the covers.

‘Did we…?’

‘Yes,’ Ron confirmed, and Ginny looked panic-stricken.

‘Bloody hell,’ she spat, sporting a real good impression of her brother, ‘what were we thinking?’

‘We weren’t,’ Ron assured her, ‘we were drinking.’

Ginny glared at him. ‘Oh great, I’m sure that’ll hold up well when Harry asks me where I was last night.’

Ron sat up suddenly, his hangover momentarily forgotten. ‘Gin, you can’t tell.’

‘I know that,’ she hissed at him, she was moving to the edge of the bed, ‘I was being facetious.’

She got to the edge of the bed and realised she was naked – she wrapped a sheet around herself and got up and began to pick up her items of clothing

‘I’d better be going,’ she said quickly, Ron watched her dart around the room picking up her clothes.

‘Wait, Ginny,’ Ron said, as his sister got to the threshold of his bedroom door, ‘why don’t you stay for breakfast? We should talk about this.’

‘I don’t think I can right now, Ron,’ Ginny said, she stepped over the threshold, still wrapped in the sheet and looking positively petrified. ‘I’ll speak to you when I can.’

‘But, we can’t just… leave it at that,’ he said to her realistically.

Ginny sighed, put her free hand to her head which was throbbing, and turned away, leaving without another word. Ron felt his own hand slip to his head again, the hangover was a unyielding reminder of what he had done – and as he fell back against his pillow and stared at the ceiling in disbelief, he wondered if he’d just ruined his relationship with his sister.

-

Ron had decided in that moment not to chase Ginny – he fell asleep soon after she had left in a bid to get rid of the hangover he had, and it wasn’t until late afternoon that he was pacing his lounge room pondering what to do. He thought perhaps a spontaneous visit to her house so soon after the event was a bit extreme, but he determined not to leave their situation unresolved.

He tried writing her a letter to send by owl, and this took up the majority of his evening – he had the left over pizza for dinner, and listened to the world going past his window as he wrote. A pile of parchment began to build up on his kitchen floor, because he was finding it very difficult to write what he was thinking and feeling, whilst having to be cryptic with the words he used. He didn’t want to make it clear in his letter that he’d slept with his sister, in case it got into the wrong hands.

By the time it was two in the morning, even to him his best draft wasn’t making much sense – so because he was tired, and because it was obvious he wouldn’t be sending any letter to his sister any time soon, Ron cleaned up and went to bed. This didn’t help clear his mind; as he got under the covers, all he could smell was Ginny, and so he was reminded of his problems and insomnia grabbed hold of him.

-

It was a couple of days later before Ginny finally agreed to meet Ron for a coffee to discuss their evening together. She had only ended up saying yes to him, once it had been determined by them both that they should meet somewhere isolated and off the grid from the Wizarding world. There was a quaint coffee shop on the very outskirts of London, and it was a very muggle heavy area, and they were both positively certain that no one they knew lived anywhere near there.

And so that was where Ron sat, in a tiny corner booth, shielded from the windows and the entry way of the coffee shop. He was sipping his black coffee nervously, hoping beyond hope that she would stand him up and that they could break the ice between them.

Ginny arrived five minutes late looking positively nervous, and constantly over her shoulder, but at least she arrived. She sat opposite her brother; they exchanged the word “hi” and then fell silent, waiting for the inevitable conversation to start. It was delayed by the waitress coming over to take Ginny’s order, and once she had gone to fetch a cappuccino, Ginny looked up expectantly at her brother with hesitancy.

‘Well, here we are,’ she said to him, shifting nervously.

‘Yeah,’ Ron nodded his head; he was sipping his coffee just as nervously as she was fidgeting.

The fell silent again and a good minute passed as they attempted to think of something to say; Ron couldn’t believe that his brain was suddenly stumped, when all he had done for the past three days is plan exactly what he was going to say to her. But now that he was seated opposite her, he was finding it difficult to distinguish the difference between his sister and the girl he had had sex with.

If he couldn’t do that, he wasn’t sure the issue could be resolved.

The waitress returned with Ginny’s coffee, and she welcomed the distraction because it was something she could do, instead of just waiting. She stirred her drink before taking a sip and returning her focus on her brother.

‘Let’s just get it out into the open,’ Ginny said with pursed lips, forcing a surprised expression from Ron, ‘what we did, was a mistake.’

Ron stared at her without blinking and pondered these words for a moment. 

‘I agree,’ he said finally.

‘Good,’ Ginny said, and she took another sip of her coffee. ‘We are both adults, we didn’t mean for anything to happen – we were upset at other people, we had a good time talking about our problems, we got drunk, and then we lost our inhibitions for a few minutes.’

‘Exactly,’ Ron nodded in agreement; he loved the fact that it was Ginny who was on the front foot.

‘It was one night,’ Ginny said with a shrug, ‘and we don’t intend repeating it, do we?’

‘Definitely not,’ Ron said firmly.

‘OK good,’ Ginny said, and she was stirring her coffee again. ‘Hopefully we can move past it now. Although I think its better that we don’t tell anyone, particularly Harry or Hermione, but especially our family.’

‘Especially not our family,’ Ron repeated, ‘probably best that we leave it at that, now that we’ve talked about it.’

Ginny nodded. ‘Right.’

Ron felt his confidence returning as he sipped his coffee – they shared a smile and waited for the moment to pass.

‘So,’ Ron said after a considerable amount of time had passed, ‘now that everything is out in the open, and we’ve accepted it, I have to ask…’

‘Ask what?’ Ginny said curiously.

Ron, being a guy, could not pass up the opportunity to ask her this.

‘How was it for you?’ he asked her, forcing her eyebrow to rise. ‘The sex I mean.’

Ginny blinked at him. ‘Are you asking for feedback?’

There was a hint of amusement in her voice, which carried mostly disbelief.

‘Maybe I am,’ Ron said in return.

Ginny just calmly sipped her coffee before looking around.

‘I’m not about to tell you that here,’ she hissed at him, but then she looked down at the table, ‘what if I just fill out one of these?’

She picked up one of the cards that sat on the table, and flipped it over; it was basically a small survey that could be filled out as feedback for the coffee shop they were sitting on. There was a list of questions that, to Ginny’s delight, could be interpreted differently as to what she wanted to say.

And so she began to fill it out.

‘I don’t see how that could help,’ Ron said with a frown, as Ginny contemplated the questions.

After another minute of silence had passed, where Ron fidgeted and sipped his coffee, Ginny put her pen down and slid the card across the table for Ron to read. He swallowed hard as he put his coffee down and picked up the card, casually sneaking a glance at a smirking Ginny before he read it.

As his eyes trailed down the list of questions, his stomach reacted in all sorts of ways; under courtesy and neatness of appearance, Ginny had given him top marks and had added in the note section below it “extra emphasis on courtesy, due to pulling out of the way before spilling.” Ron smiled weakly at this note, knowing exactly what she was talking about.

Next it asked if you were served in a prompt and timely manner; Ginny had ticked the yes box again and this out of all the questions so far caused Ron to look up at her in surprise.

 

She was smiling broadly at him as he read, but she said nothing, and simply sipped her coffee in wait for him to finish.

Ron smirked at her answer to wether she was happy with the pastries and buns that were on offer; Ginny had of course ticked yes and added in the notes “pastry was full and long, and the buns were firm but appeasing”.

The first “no” box that Ginny had ticked, was in response to “are you planning a return visit in the future?” However, the word “regrettably” had been added on the end and this had brought another small smile to Ron’s face. 

She had also said no to “will you recommend us to friends and family members?” But again she managed to feed his ego by adding in the notes section “will recommend highly to all friends now that I know the quality of the product in question.”

That gave him the happiest feeling out of all of her answers so far, and gave him slight hope that despite knowing he wouldn’t be intimate again with her, then at least maybe their evening together might have opened up a few more possibilities as far as her friends and co-workers were concerned.

The very last note at the bottom of the card was the overall score: and Ginny had given him four cups of coffee out of five.

‘Well I must say you’re quite complimentary towards me, aren’t you?’ Ron asked, finally looking up at Ginny who merely shrugged and continued sipping her coffee. ‘Although, I did happen to notice… you only gave me four cups of coffee out of five.’

Ginny carefully put her coffee cup down, folded her arms in front of herself and leaned across the table slightly.

‘You should be thrilled,’ she said to him with a wink; ‘most boys I sleep with don’t even come close to four cups of coffee.’

Ron raised his eyebrows at her. She made it sound like this coffee shop was a regular place she brought the guys she had slept with afterwards – the fact that she just kept staring at him with pursed her lips didn’t dismiss his theory.

‘And how many did Harry get?’ he asked cautiously, but Ginny laughed.

‘Five,’ she said happily, ‘but I taught him.’

‘Of course,’ Ron acknowledged, ‘but how many was it before you taught him?’

Again Ginny laughed and leaned back in the chair to survey her brother carefully.

‘Not four,’ she said, nodding, ‘but that’s all you’re going to get out of me.’

Ron grinned at himself and looked back down at the card, rereading everything that Ginny had written for him.

‘Say… would you like me to fill out one of these for you?’ Ron asked her.

‘No, that’s fine,’ Ginny said sweetly, ‘I think you made your opinion clear when you yelled out “bloody brilliant!” at the end.’

Ron felt his cheeks grow red as Ginny stood up from the table, moved towards him and gave him a peck on his cheek.

‘Take care, Ron,’ she said to him, straightening to her full height, ‘let’s have dinner again soon.’

And with one last smile at him, she left.


End file.
